


If You Asked It

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen harbors feelings for the Inquisitor... feelings she does not share.  He tries to endure, but there are some things that cannot be borne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Asked It

It sneaks up on Cullen at first.  He barely suspects it in the way he gets flustered around the Inquisitor, the smile he always seems to wear in her presence, the way she makes him laugh.  At first he pays it no mind.  She’s a good person, funny, caring; why wouldn’t he enjoy spending time with her?  Even if it’s only in the war room or out on the training grounds.

But it starts to worry him when one of her easy grins flashed his way makes his knees tremble, when he grows anxious at how long she has been gone on her journeys.  Haven burns to the ground and she barely survives it, and when he finds her in the snow and lifts her to carry her back to camp, her head nestled against his shoulder, he realizes how frightened he was that she could have fallen.

The journey to Skyhold takes weeks and in that time Cullen finds excuses to be near her; commenting on the horses when she examines them, making sure she has a good site to camp at for the night, checking in on her when she sits apart from the others and gazes into the distance.  It’s foolish, he thinks, but at times it seems like she watches him, too, and he begins to allow himself a faint and daring hope.  Maybe — it would not be too much to ask.

She and Solas lead the way to Skyhold, marching at the head of their band of refugees.  It happens so quickly that Cullen almost thinks he has imagined it, something that he glimpses out of the corner of his eye, but it hits him like a shield blow.  He sees Solas reach his hand to hers, the way she dips her head toward him, the kiss brushed against her cheek.

And he realizes he’s been such a fool.

Of course, what would a Dalish elf want with a human?  Shemlen, the elves called those like him.  She would want to be with her own people.  And then there was the fact she was a mage.  To think she would ever show interest in a man who had begged for the deaths of those like her — it did not matter that that was a decade ago, or that none here knew of it save Leliana, or that he no longer was that man.  He should have known better.

He  _does_  know better.  But the knowledge of his folly does not help him, even as the weeks turn into months.  He sees her and there’s an ache in him that has nothing to do with lyrium and everything to do with her.

Cullen pretends he’s bested his infatuation.  It’s convincing, he thinks.  He catches no ribbing from Leliana or Josephine, no questioning looks from the Inquisitor.  He does not reach to brush the edge of her hand, even when only merest inches separate them at the war table, and he does not linger looking at her smile — or if he does, it’s nearly imperceptible, the difference of a second or two.  He acts as if she is his leader, nothing more, and he sees that reflected in her eyes.  Those eyes.  They do still captivate him, much as he fights against it.

Though he is successful at maintaining the illusion of distance from her in the day, visions of her come to him at night unbidden.  He lets them, too tired to fight them.  Some are fantasies mundane and sweet — holding hands, a kiss on the battlements, laughing over breakfast — and others are fantasies far less innocent, her face flushed as she writhes beneath him, her hips rolling against his, their bodies moving in a frantic rhythm against the top of his desk.  And the guilt gnaws at him for he knows he should not think of her like this, he knows it in the way his hand moves and his teeth grit and his toes clench against the rumpled sheets, he knows it in the way he rolls over, spent, to curse his own weakness.

His resolve almost fails him the day he asks Cassandra to remove him from his duties.  The strain of the missing lyrium, the way he fights to keep his feelings for her hidden, the mounting pressure of succeeding against Corypheus, it all comes to a head that day.  He feels deathly ill inside, though he knows that to the others he looks resolute as ever.  Cassandra tells him flatly that he’ll make it, but she doesn’t know — nobody does — the way he teeters on a knife’s edge.

The Inquisitor comes to find him.  He nearly hits her by accident with the hated lyrium kit, begs her forgiveness.  He can barely think.  The pounding in his head has him reeling and dizzy.  Words tumble out of him, more than he’s said in years.  The sounds are shameful, weak, a confession of his sins and the torment he tries to pretend he’s moved past.  He’s sickened to hear himself, but she stays.

She takes his words with grace and kindness.  She listens to him fall apart before her.  She does not back away from him as he paces frantically and slams his fist against the bookshelf.  Instead she lays a hand on his chest; it rises and falls with his ragged breaths.

“What is it  _you_  want, Cullen?”

He freezes, the moment spooling out before him.  The headache tears at him but through the pain she’s there, tender with him in a way she never has been before.  Has she ever been this close to him?  He feels the weight of her small hand against his chest and lets himself really look at her, the sort of gaze he does not afford himself lest she realize.  She’s beautiful, lips slightly parted, eyes bright and compassionate, freckles across the bridge of her nose, her hair falling gracefully around the tips of her pointed ears.  He trembles.

“ _You_ ,” he almost says, feels the syllable catch against his teeth and tongue, swallows it back before it can damn him.  But the word feels so  _right_ , and he shakes with the need for her.   _I could endure anything if you asked it of me._  But he can’t say that; there is Solas to think of, there is her trust in him, there is the work they are both willing to give up their lives for.  There is more to the world than this woman standing so close to him, close enough to kiss —

“Cullen?”

He lets out a huff of breath, lowers his gaze.  He can’t look at her.  “To — to be free of this,” he chokes out.   _To be free of **you**_ , part of him thinks but cannot bear to mean.

“So don’t take the lyrium,” she says quietly, giving him a gentle smile.  “I believe you can do this, if you want to.”

He tries to smile back but his face does not work quite right.  “… thank you,” he says, and the words come out clumsy.  “But if I cannot endure this —”

“You can.”  He sees the faith in her eyes, faith in  _him_  and his own will.  It gives him strength, even as it tears him down.  It’s one of the reasons that he loves her, but it hurts, all the same.

She pulls her hand away from him and steps backward.  “Take care, Cullen.  If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me.”  

All he can do is nod as she leaves.  The room feels so much smaller without her in it.  He looks around at fallen books, shattered vials of lyrium on the floor, papers scattered everywhere.  The detritus of a fool and his folly.  

He sits down at his desk and bows his head to his clasped hands.  He means to pray, to beg for guidance, for forgiveness, for anything.  

The only word he utters is her name.

**Author's Note:**

> An anon prompted me to write this on tumblr and it broke my heart :(


End file.
